Address on Tennyson, His Conception of Art and Life

Winnipeg, 1915

ADDRESS ON TENNYSON BY PROF. CRAWFORD

Wives of officers stationed in Winnipeg on military duty are to be admitted to the courtesy of the Western Art association through the gracious action taken by the members at a meeting held yesterday afternoon in the drawing room on the mezzanine floor of the Fort Garry, an action prompted by the consideration that the officers' wives, most of them away from their homes on a not too gladsome errand and missing their usual activities, should be made to feel as much at home as possible. In future they are to receive notices of meetings exactly as regular members.

The president, Mrs. Alan C. Ewart, announced that Lady Cameron will formally open the General Exchange, Carlton street, Saturday, Jan. 16, at 4 o'clock. She explained that the exchange and lunch room adjacent were doing business all the time and working up to quite a flourishing condition, but this would be the official opening. To help with expenses for a month or so a series of small matinee bridges were planned, the first to be held at Mrs. Ewart's residence, Ruskin and Park Row, Thursday, January 21, at 3 o'clock.

The address of the afternoon was given by Prof. A. W. Crawford on the subject, "Tennyson's Conception of Art and Life." He showed the great poet as the champion of the social value of art, and the proclaimer of the social responsibility of the artist, as the recluse in actual life, but not in thought or spirit.

In support of this interpretation, Dr. Crawford let Tennyson speak for himself through two groups of his poems, the first dealing with the poet's art, and the second with the arts of form, namely painting, sculpture and architecture.

Several of these gems the speaker read with a sympathy and power that made them an intense pleasure to hear, even without his illuminative side comments. In them he showed Tennyson's message to be that the pursuit of art for art's sake meant spiritual stagnation, but art was the hand maiden of life, the endeavor to present life in its most perfect forms and ideals, not to the mere end of perfect art, but to the goal of perfecting human lives. All problems of life and death, good and ill, were problems for the poet or artist because his mission was as a revealer of truth to men.

Tennyson's supreme art poem, the "Palace of Art," showed a soul building a palace of beauty for her own selfish enjoyment, but turned back upon herself, "like the still salt pool, locked in by bars of sand," descending through uncertainty and confusion to utter misery she was redeemed at last only by sharing her palace with her fellows.

—Manitoba Morning Free Press, Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada, January 9, 1915, page 9.